Yahoo! Japan recently marked the third anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake on 11 March by holding a charity drive where it pledged 10 yen (US$0.10) towards relief efforts for every person who entered “3.11” into its search engine.

The company had initially planned to donate 5 million yen based on data that estimated the number of people who would search via its site. However it received over 2.5 million searches over a period of 24 hours and decided to donate the full amount of 25 million yen, which is about US$249,000. The money went to Recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake Support Foundation, a charity that runs sports and education programmes for children affected by the earthquake.